This exciting new project has started by Warwick University:
The project’s five main objectives.
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First, by producing a series of interlinked case studies (of people, objects and homes in England, Scotland and Wales), it seeks to create a research base that will underpin meaningful analysis of change over time and space within British country houses, focusing specifically on the acquisition, use, meaning and circulation of Asian luxury goods.
Second, it seeks to situate the Asian goods that furnished Georgian and Victorian homes within ongoing social, cultural, political and economic relations, rather than to study them in isolation from their dynamic historical contexts.
Third, the research team will illuminate the ways in which material culture helped to mediate wider historical processes, such as family formation and reproduction, the creation and maintenance of trade networks, and the operation of political and military systems (for example, through webs of patronage).
Fourth, the project will assess the ways in which Asian luxuries incorporated within British country houses expressed (or, at times, papered over) regional, national and global identities.
Fifth, The East India Company at Home is designed to integrate academic and museum-based research on the global genealogies of British country house interiors with research findings generated by amateur local and family historians, whose activities have risen dramatically in the past decade in response to the availability of new digital resources and online forms of communication.
The East India Company at Home will create a series of interlinked case studies of individuals, families, objects and country houses, and will publish these case studies on the project website. The academic project team will conduct detailed research on approximately twenty families associated with specific country houses in Georgian England, Scotland and Wales. Archival research on the selected families and homes will be supplemented by analysis of material objects, contemporary printed descriptions and debates on the meaning of Asian commodities
To register your interest, please complete the online form from the project website www.warwick.ac.uk/go/eastindiacompanyathome
or download it and email the completed form to East.India.Company@warwick.ac.uk
Project associates will receive updates on research and invitations to study-days, workshops, seminars and conferences and will be invited to contribute to the database and published case studies.
For further information, see the project’s website at www.warwick.ac.uk/go/eastindiacompanyathome.
The Families in British India (FIBIS) website has an announcement concerning a new three year long University of Warwick project entitled The East India Company at Home 1757-1857, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The project organiser is seeking participants to help with the project.
From the project leaflet at
www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/research/eicah/about/east_india_leaflet_web.pdf :
The East India Company at Home will combine the project team’s research findings with historical material and objects identified by local and family historians, curators and others, weaving together a series of connected histories – of objects, people and places – to illuminate the ways in which colonial exploits and Asian commodities shaped British material culture and social identities in the Georgian and Victorian eras.
The project will look at the effects of the East India Company’s success by tracing its impact in Britain – part of the work will be an in depth look at Roxburghshire as a case study.
Further information is available at the leaflet and on the FIBIS blog post at www.new.fibis.org/archives/503.
